Giving Atheist Money to a Charity That Works with Churches

If you show me a christian that doesn’t proselytize, I may have to start believing in god because that’d be a miracle.

Maybe I’m too cynical but I just don’t believe they don’t do it.

I think donating to Soulforce is actually a very good idea because by all appearances, pretty almost all the anti-LGBT sentiment comes from the religious, so why not use the liberal religious to try to change that?

Whether or not this sort of thing is a good idea depends on what you think the Foundation should be doing; either it’s an atheist organisation for getting good stuff done, or it’s an organisation for getting atheist stuff done. If it’s the former, then it doesn’t matter so much who actually does the good stuff, provided they do it well. If it’s the latter then it doesn’t seem sensible to fund religious groups at all.

I’d previously got the general impression that the Foundation was trying to do two things – to do generally good stuff (rather than specifically advance the cause of atheism), but to demonstrate by doing it that charitable and other ‘good works’ aren’t the sole preserve of the religious. Passing ‘atheist money’ on to organisations like this seems to risk obscuring that message – are people that see the work being done going to see just another faith based charity doing stuff, or are they going to see the atheist funding behind it?

Here’s a suggestion: Screen out the groups with theists from the list of potential groups to help.

Remember the Boy Scouts and their method? I wouldn’t want to join a group that doesn’t want me, so the theists in charity groups should understand.

Would I respect an organization that claimed to want to help but categorically refused to work with secular organizations? No. In fact, I can recall that this attitude doesn’t go over well at all.

I personally have absolutely no problem giving to a nominally religious group that doesn’t proselytize and is doing worthwhile work, just as long as there doesn’t exist a fully secular group with as much need and doing equally good work. Other things being equal, I’d rather give to a fully secular group, but priority nº 1 is getting help to those in need. I can understand others not agreeing and adjusting their donations proportion so that the religious group doesn’t get their money. I don’t understand refusing to donate at all because the option exists to give some of that money to a nominally religious group.

I don’t understand refusing to donate at all because the option exists to give some of that money to a nominally religious group.

Claudia, because I then have to spend time screening out the charities they use to make sure my money doesn’t go to a religious organization. The reason this pisses me off so much is because I thought this would be an organization (unlike United Way, for instance) that could be trusted not to divert any of it’s pooled money to religion. Apparently not.

Hence, since I can’t trust them, I’m not going to send them one red cent. If I have to go to the trouble of screening the charities anyway, I might as well just do that on my own and give directly to the charities that pass my muster.

Frankly, I have gotten to the point where I don’t trust go-between charities. Besides it really doesn’t make much sense when you think about it. You’re paying extra operating costs for a charity to find other chartities for you. They’re always going to have to keep a portion of the money for their operation costs. Better to give 100% to the charities that do the actual work that you approve of.

muggle said: “Frankly, I have gotten to the point where I don’t trust go-between charities. Besides it really doesn’t make much sense when you think about it. You’re paying extra operating costs for a charity to find other chartities for you. They’re always going to have to keep a portion of the money for their operation costs. Better to give 100% to the charities that do the actual work that you approve of.”

I totally agree. That’s one reason why Atheists Helping the Homeless made the up-front guarantee that 100% of donations received would go to the items we give to the homeless. Any fee between the donor and us subtracts from the items we can buy to give out.

That’s Atheists Helping the Homeless:
http://www.youtube.com/aajoeyjo

Austin, Texas

josh, where do you live? there are plenty of Christians who don’t push their religion on others. i’m sorry you’ve never met one. up here, they are everywhere, for all one tends not to notice them because their hypocritical fellow religionists can’t shut up about belief.

Why are there basically no American charities?

Ewan:

I’d previously got the general impression that the Foundation was trying to do two things – to do generally good stuff (rather than specifically advance the cause of atheism), but to demonstrate by doing it that charitable and other ‘good works’ aren’t the sole preserve of the religious. Passing ‘atheist money’ on to organisations like this seems to risk obscuring that message – are people that see the work being done going to see just another faith based charity doing stuff, or are they going to see the atheist funding behind it?

Very well put.

When Dale McGowan announced the creation of FBB, I was intrigued and excited: it was a direct rebuttal to the “how come atheists don’t ever do charity?” slime that we constantly get from the religious. Finally we’d have a charity that was explicitly irreligious and yet helped people. (Since then, I’ve learned that FBB isn’t alone in this respect.)

Giving money to a Quaker organization, or a group called “Soulforce,” destroys the very reason I would have given money to FBB. I can give money to churches any time I want to. FBB was useful in that it was a conscientious organization that did good works explicitly without religion. So much for rebutting the “atheists don’t do charity” smear: instead, FBB has supported that smear by admitting through their actions that they can’t do good without supporting religion.

The focus on proselytizing as an excuse for bankrolling Quakers and other religionist entities seems to me disingenuous and low. Non-proselytizing religion is still religion. It’s still not a good thing. It’s still something that I have no interest supporting with my money, and it’s something I would have hoped that an organization that purports to be “Beyond Belief” would have avoided. The name of your nonprofit is not “Foundation Beyond Proselytizing Religion.”

I’m forced to look elsewhere for a deserving recipient of my charitable donations. A “non-religious” foundation that gives money to religious groups seems to me to have eliminated its reason to exist.

So… can someone find me where, anywhere, on the soulforce website that they acknowledge this donation and thank the atheists? I searched ‘atheist’ on their site and the only result was some page with the classic “Well atheists probably do still believe and just don’t wanna admit it” crap.

Sorry but this is looking like another self-hating religious gay group that devotes most of their time to whitewashing history so that the textbooks will claim it was just a ‘handful’ of ‘misinterpreting’ people who opposed gay rights when it was well over 90%. Once they’ve succeeded in spreading the lie that no true Christian ever opposed gay rights which group do you think will get the blame for it? On gay blogs I’ve already seen ‘christian’ gays try to claim *with completely made up statistics to back it up* that atheists overwhelmingly oppose gay rights and that it’s really just a small minority of Christians opposed to them.

Even if we assume they’re actually fighting for my equal rights instead of just trying to cover up for the people that took those rights away, why donate to them? Theirs tons of gay rights groups that have no religious aspect and don’t waste time apologizing for the bigots.

We’ve done several charity events this year with our group (Charlotte). There’s an organization that coordinates events throughout the city and we’ve volunteered our time cleaning up schools. We’ve done stuff for the Humane Society. Most recently we did a fund raiser for Pints For Prostates.

My personal opinion is that if we put it to a vote, a large majority of our members would not want to work or fund anything associated with a church. Also, down here I would think there are that many churches that would want our help or our money.

You would not believe the hoops I had to go through to GIVE money to a cancer charity. A bunch of emails, calls from the VP about what we’re doing and why, all that jazz. But that’s par for the course for us. We have a hell of a time getting folks to do business with us in general (we could tell you some stories about trying to get a banner made and of course you heard about our billboard adventures). There’s just a lot of bad blood out there so it’s hard for us.

Having atheists show that they can do charitable work also sets a good example. My preference would be to support atheist groups and friendly (to atheists, anyway) secular groups first and foremost.

I don’t think “secular” means what some of the people here think it means. The word isn’t a synonym for “atheist”. It means the work the group does isn’t religious. Growing up I went to a conservative Baptist church and in addition to the obnoxious stuff like going door to door trying to get people to come to church, we also did some things that were completely secular (food drives, mostly).

I don’t know whether the groups that FBB is donating to qualify as “secular” or not, but the fact that religious people are involved shouldn’t be a problem as long as the money is only helping secular causes. It might be hard to believe here in America when it’s hard to watch the news without seeing a christian bragging about how ignorant and intolerant they are, but being religious doesn’t actually make you stupid or evil. They have delusional beliefs, but they’re capable of doing good work when they try, just like the rest of us. It seems like the first priority should be taking care of people, and showing off how atheists can be good people too should be secondary.

the Bible and historic Christian doctrine are just not the loving, tolerant, liberal things Soulforce and similar liberal Christian entities pretend they are.

This is why I put ‘christian’ in quotes in my post. You aren’t ever allowed to even imply this on a gay blog but the apologetics for why the overwhelming majority of Christianity has hated gay people for a solid 2000 years are usually pretty pathetic. They almost always boil down to ‘I can’t stop being gay and Jesus loves me so Jesus must love gay people.’ and claiming those that keep pointing to the blatantly anti-gay passages in the bible aren’t ‘true christians’.

Go to a gay blog and find an article about some religious leader bashing gay people. *pretty easy search* I guarantee the comments will be full of people claiming they aren’t a ‘real’ Christian and how the only true Christians are the ones following their interpretation which fully accepts gay people and which probably didn’t exist until a few decades ago at the most.

Samiimas, I agree with you. Liberal believers, including gay ones, routinely engage in serious hypocrisy and wishful thinking regarding the texts and doctrines of Christianity. It’s very hard to find a strain of that religion that doesn’t abuse the No True Scotsman fallacy when dealing with contrasting strains. (Happens in Islam, too.)

[M]any religious moderates imagine, as you [Andrew Sullivan] do, that there is some clear line of separation between extremist and moderate religion. But there isn’t. Scripture itself remains a perpetual engine of extremism: because, while He may be many things, the God of the Bible and the Qur’an is not a moderate. Read scripture more closely and you do not find reasons for religious moderation; you find reasons to live like a proper religious maniac—to fear the fires of hell, to despise nonbelievers, to persecute homosexuals, etc. Of course, one can cherry-pick scripture and find reasons to love one’s neighbor and turn the other cheek, but the truth is, the pickings are pretty slim, and the more fully one grants credence to these books, the more fully one will be committed to the view that infidels, heretics, and apostates are destined to be ground up in God’s loving machinery of justice.

How does one “integrate doubt” into one’s faith? By acknowledging just how dubious many of the claims of scripture are, and thereafter reading it selectively, bowdlerizing it if need be, and allowing its assertions about reality to be continually trumped by fresh insights—scientific (“You mean the world isn’t 6000 years old? Yikes”), mathematical (“pi doesn’t actually equal 3? All right, so what?”), and moral (“You mean, I shouldn’t beat my slaves? I can’t even keep slaves? Hmm”). Religious moderation is the result of not taking scripture all that seriously. So why not take these books less seriously still? Why not admit that they are just books, written by fallible human beings like ourselves?

[….]

Religious moderates—by refusing to question the legitimacy of raising children to believe that they are Christians, Muslims, and Jews—tacitly support the religious divisions in our world. They also perpetuate the myth that a person must believe things on insufficient evidence in order to have an ethical and spiritual life. While religious moderates don’t fly planes into buildings, or organize their lives around apocalyptic prophecy, they refuse to deeply question the preposterous ideas of those who do. Moderates neither submit to the real demands of scripture nor draw fully honest inferences from the growing testimony of science. In attempting to find a middle ground between religious dogmatism and intellectual honesty, it seems to me that religious moderates betray faith and reason equally.

– Sam Harris, debate with Andrew Sullivan

I think Harris is correct, and I cannot in good conscience support with my money the things that, as Harris points out, liberal religion does.

I think Sam Harris is attacking a straw-man as the Reformed Jews, Quakers, UCC, and Unitarians I’ve met would certainly say scriptures are written by fallible human beings.

The step that they are unwilling to take is the position of atheism.

Rieux, most of the liberal to moderates I’ve met fall into the belief in belief camp. They’ll readily admit that the bible is entirely a human invention.

For example I’ve pressed some of my wife’s relatives about their beliefs and their general position is that there’s more to being a good Jew than believing in God.

Rieux – That was a stronger response than I expected, and I don’t want to answer most of it without a chance to think about it a bit (no point in having these discussions if you’re not willing to consider changing your mind). I do think you missed where I was going with one of my points though. Religious institutions can run charities whose work is secular, even though they use the church or religion’s name. When my former church (which was NOT an excepting, liberal one) sent volunteers to a place that served meals to the homeless I didn’t see any preaching at all. It was somewhere with a very christian name staffed by church volunteers, but all they did was serve food. I’d still be willing to give time or money to that specific group if I couldn’t find an non-church based one I liked better, even if I wouldn’t dream of letting one penny of my money go into that churches general fund. I was only saying that while the words “Quaker”, “Catholic”, and “soul” in the name of a charity should be warning signs, I don’t think they should be a deal breaker.

(I’m also pretty sure I agree that finding worthy Cristian charities to give to defeats the purpose of a group like FBB, that was a good point)

If we’re only giving our money to atheist groups, aren’t we turning into the atheist version of the Boy Scouts and isn’t it hypocritical for us to complain about Boy Scouts discriminating against non-theists while we turn around and do the same to theists? Doesn’t Camp Quest welcome theists to their camp?

My new policy is to ignore you, AJ since you’re just a troll.

NG:

My new policy is to ignore you, AJ since you’re just a troll.

What offensive nonsense. Aj responded reasonably and directly to your questions. The fact that you don’t like his answers does not make him a troll.

For shame.

Neon Genesis, I don’t give a flying fig about the Boy Scouts discriminating. I’m just glad they’ve been outed as such because it was never obvious and that’s somewhat trickery and the public schools have no business advertising them. Likewise, they have no business advertising Camp Quest. Same reason. How the hell is AJ being a troll? He just disagreed with you.

I don’t think “secular” means what some of the people here think it means. The word isn’t a synonym for “atheist”. It means the work the group does isn’t religious.

Well, duh! No kidding? Um, I think we’re saying just that. Hence my dollars going to secular organizations. However, if they have a religion’s name or some religious concept such as soul, spirit, etc., it’s promoting the idea of that nonsense and I’m not going to support it. Point blank. The one exception I make is the Red Cross and that because not only are they secular and the red cross only based on the Swiss flag because they were founded by a Swede, they have been willing to bend in a highly un-Christian areas using a symbol of the majority faith in Muslim countries and Israel.

I cannot stress this enough: if there’s a religion or religious concept in their name, they are automatically prostelyzing even if they don’t preach! Supporting them is also supporting that religious concept.

Christina, Joe, thanks for the links! I have bookmarked them into my charities folder. Samiimas, do you have any for the charities you reference? I just halved my income by retiring but I like to keep these things on hand for when I do have a few extra dollars. I’m applying for Social Security too and if I get that, well, I’ll be okay and hopefully will again have a few dollars each month to give. Rieux, well said all around.

I really think we need to get more Atheist charities that actually do!

So, MH, no response to my demonstration that you accused Harris of a “straw man” that was in fact not a straw man?

I live in New England where nearly a quarter of the people have no religion. The liberal denominations are the religious moderates, and evangelicals are scarce.

And the relevance of this is what? When did Sam Harris say anything about New England particularly? He talked about religous moderates, not the people who are relatively moderate in (your version of) New England.

There are more than six billion of us who live in places besides New England. When Harris says something about your neighborhood particularly, maybe your parochial personal experience in that atypical place will be relevant. Until then, Unitarian Universalism, UCC and Quakers are not “moderate,” they’re flamingly liberal—and, more to the point, the conditions on your street do not disprove what Harris said.

This exchange started because you decided to take shots at Harris’ argument. Retreating to “well, that’s not how things are around here” amounts to admitting that he’s right.

Neon Genesis wrote: “Why do all these people who find the idea of working together with any religion in any way so repulsive bother coming to a site called The Friendly Atheist?”

You are misunderstanding the motivation for people’s objections.

Many atheists have volunteered/donated to religious-based charities because they had no other options available but still wanted to help. And almost any secular charity still has many religious people volunteering/donating to it, despite the charity having nothing to do with the individuals’ religions and not promoting religions in any way.

Rieux’s October 9th, 2010 2:46 pm post explains why we specifically dislike the Foundation Beyond Belief including religious-based charities: it misses the point of bothering to have a Foundation Beyond Belief.
http://friendlyatheist.com/2010/10/09/giving-atheist-money-to-a-charity-that-works-with-churches/#comment-561032

…
How ignorant do you think the atheists who disagree with FBB on this point are? Do you think that we’re under the impression that there are no religious people “involved” in the Foundation for African Medicine and Education, or in a soup kitchen in Trenton? Do you think we’ve grown up in a society that isn’t dominated by religion and religious people—one in which every public effort we’ve ever participated in hasn’t been overwhelmingly staffed by believers?
…
If that’s the case, why does FBB need to exist at all? Why don’t you just give money to Catholic Charities and Christian Disaster Relief and Christians Against Poverty and Operation Blessing and all of the thousands of other overtly faith-based charitable organizations in the world? You can even spare a dime or two for FAME and similarly secular organizations as well. Atheists have done all of the above for decades, if not centuries.

If “taking care of people” is the one and only thing you care about, why do you need a Foundation Beyond Belief at all?

Re: Quakers,

Lots of them are atheists. You don’t have to worship a god to be a Quaker, you just have to follow the golden rule.

Lots of quakers believe that it is sufficient to take Jesus as an example (e.g. Matthew 7:12).
Lots of conscientious objectors, driving Ambulances through the battle fields in WWII were Quakers.

They have done good work through the years and are just better organised than non-affiliated atheists.

I have never yet met one who proselytizes.

Josh, that does not mean that god exists, just the Shakespeare was right.

MH, I’m afraid you’re confused about what is and is not at issue. And I do wish you’d remember your initial potshot that started this exchange: you claimed Harris’ argument was a “straw man.” I explained why it isn’t. You seem to be pretending that that never happened. Are you tacitly conceding that you were mistaken?

Rieux, dragging six billion people in this when Sam Harris has largely been talking about the US (e.g. Letter to a Christian Nation) seems like you are changing the terms of the debate.

What are you talking about? What in the world makes you think that Sam Harris’ work, or the comments from him that I quoted, only apply to the United States?

Have you read The End of Faith? It absolutely does not “largely talk about the US.” And Harris’ concern with religious moderates is certainly not restricted to the U.S.; you seem to have forgotten that the passage I quoted was from Harris’ online debate with Andrew Sullivan, and Sullivan is English (though he lives in the U.S.).

So, let’s recap. Harris voices several critiques of religious moderates, and I quote some (~5) of those critiques. You accuse him of a “straw man,” because you think one of the critiques does not apply to “most” of the religious people you personally happen to know. Reminded that Harris was not just talking about residents of the notably atypical region you live in, you complain that at least he “has largely been talking about the US,” which (1) is in fact false with regard to the critiques I quoted, (2) is also false regarding a wide variety of other critiques—including the most infamous ones—that Harris has published, and most importantly (3) does nothing whatsoever to rehabilitate your complaints about Harris.

In that debate with a famous Englishman, Harris in fact does not limit his critique to American religion (though he does point out the well-studied religious insanity present within the American populace as evidence that such insanity is no small problem for the world). The “moderate” religion Harris attacks is certainly present in numerous other places on the globe, though its numbers pale in comparison to the numbers of theologically conservative True Believers.

All of which is to say that you’re simply evading the questions at issue, over and over again, with red herring after red herring. The peculiar cultural milieu of New England (where I spent several years myself) is not relevant. Your limited personal experience with a tiny proportion of the world’s religious people, burdened as that experience is with selection bias, is not relevant. Your (as it happens incorrect) notions about Harris’s major focus on the United States are not relevant.

What is relevant is what Harris has written, and what you have criticized him for. Please stop throwing chaff into the air.

…Well, too late—here’s more:

There was just a discussion about the Pew survey which showed most religious Americans failed a test in religious literacy, and most Catholics don’t understand the concept of the real presence!

Uh, indeed. I think we should remember, though, that even we atheists had an embarrassingly low average score on that (pitifully easy) quiz; our score was just a little less embarrassing than anyone else’s. The real finding of that survey is that there is widespread ignorance among Americans regarding basic facts about religion.

But what in the world does this have to do with Harris’s point?

So claiming they are ignorant of their religious texts and then claiming they believe them to be literally true seems incompatible.

What kind of nonsensical notion is that?

The fact that a given group of religious people scored poorly on a test of religious literacy does absolutely nothing to demonstrate that they don’t believe absurd things. (Surely you’re aware that there is a strong correlation between low levels of education and high levels of religiosity.) At most, it might show that many of them don’t believe the very specific absurd things that the leaders of their religions, many of whom have been dead for centuries, have defined.

As you must be aware, the Pew survey (which did not even seek to study beliefs, of course, just literacy) is not the only research that has been performed. And guess who’s done a good job of compiling eye-opening results in the area you’ve just mentioned?

According to Gallup, 35 percent of Americans believe that the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of the Creator of the universe. Another 48 percent believe that it is the “inspired” word of the same—still inerrant, though certain of its passages must be interpreted symbolically before their truth can be brought to light. Only 17 percent of us remain to doubt that a personal God, in his infinite wisdom, is likely to have authored this text—or, for that matter, to have created the earth with its 250,000 species of beetles. Some 46 percent of Americans take a literalist view of creation (40 percent believe that God has guided creation over the course of millions of years). This means that 120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer. If our polls are to be trusted, nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity. A survey of Hindus, Muslims, and Jews around the world would surely yield similar results, revealing that we, as a species, have grown almost perfectly intoxicated by our myths. How is it that, in this one area of our lives, we have convinced ourselves that our beliefs about the world can float entirely free of reason and evidence?

– Sam Harris, The End of Faith

So please stop flailing. New England is not relevant. Your personal impressions regarding the beliefs of a handful of your very liberally religious neighbors are not relevant. The Pew literacy survey is not relevant. What is relevant is the claims from Harris that I quoted, and your criticisms of those claims. If you want to defend those criticisms, please do so, and stop the diversions.

Muggle said:

I don’t trust go-between charities. Besides it really doesn’t make much sense when you think about it. You’re paying extra operating costs for a charity to find other chartities for you. They’re always going to have to keep a portion of the money for their operation costs.

Well, no. 100% of donations to Foundation Beyond Belief go to the featured charities. We keep nothing. Our operations are funded by separate donations and grants.

Many of the other arguments in the thread are perfectly valid for guiding personal choices. We designed our system so members can distribute their donations as they wish, expressing their humanistic worldview as they wish, not as we wish.

Many of our members find this particular kind of outreach to progressive religious groups a meaningful expression of their humanism. You are welcome to find that self-contradictory, but is anyone really suggesting they shouldn’t even have the option?

Dale McGowan,

Also: The name “Soulforce” is a translation of the Sanskrit word satyagraha, coined by Gandhi to describe the principle of nonviolent resistance. It has no relation at all to the religious concept of “soul.”

I am a child of a loving Creator, a daughter or a son of the Soulforce at the center of the universe.*

4 Step Journey: Step 1 (soulforce.org)

Many of our members find this particular kind of outreach to progressive religious groups a meaningful expression of their humanism. You are welcome to find that self-contradictory….

I may or may not be speaking for anyone else, but the reason I’m somewhat unenthused about the label “humanist” is that it is far too easy to co-opt (and in fact has been co-opted, in notable instances) into full-blown religion. There are unquestionably folks on the planet who find unquestioning obedience to the Pope to be “a meaningful expression of their humanism.” The meaning of that word is ambiguous enough that I guess I’m not interested in pounding tables and fighting about which conceptions are “self-contradictory” and which aren’t; it’s just that a humanism that finds value in bankrolling religion is a humanism I’m not interested in.

I’m just talking about what kinds of institutions I can support in good conscience and which I can’t. In light of the various ways it’s used in the real world, the fact that someone who disagrees with me carries the label “humanism” on their nametag is neither here nor there.

[I]s anyone really suggesting they shouldn’t even have the option?

Of course not. Atheists have, and have always had, the “option” of giving money to religious institutions. Nothing prevents atheists who admire, say, Quaker peace efforts from giving money to Quaker organizations.

I don’t see what terrible harm would befall us all if FBB decided to make funding decisions that were simply as secular as its name is. The notion that bankrolling religious organizations is necessary to present certain donors with “the option” of expressing their humanism that way seems to me rather silly: said humanists are, as they always have been, capable of contributing money to religious institutions on their own. They don’t need a Foundation Beyond Belief for that.

The reason FBB was attractive to me is that I trusted it would find deserving charities to support that are, of necessity, secular. Given that that’s not something I can count on, I don’t see what good FBB does me—or any atheist who cannot in good conscience give money to religion. (Muggle, in his/her October 9th 10:15 am comment above, made much this same point.)

Repairing the tattered remnants of the American separation of church and state is a life’s work for many of us, and it is extraordinarily difficult. It’s just a little distressing that the separation of church and atheist charitable organizations appears to be nearly as porous. Et tu, Brute?

As I said, I don’t see what the point of a Foundation Beyond Belief is if it awards funds to organizations that are overtly and proudly religious. Charitable agencies that send money to religious and secular institutions alike are a dime a dozen; if remaining staunchly on the secular side of the line isn’t your fundamental selling point, what is? What does FBB provide that, say, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (one of many religious charities that has numerous atheist donors) doesn’t?

The name “Soulforce” is a translation of the Sanskrit word satyagraha, coined by Gandhi to describe the principle of nonviolent resistance. It has no relation at all to the religious concept of “soul.”

That seems to me disingenuous. The concern many of us have is with the message a name like “Soulforce” conveys to the very real members of our society who hear and read it. Extremely few people are ever going to hear about any Sanskrit background to the name, and fewer still will care.

The name “Soulforce” transmits a message, and Sanskrit etymology is very much a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it. So to the contrary, “Soulforce” has every relation to the religious concept of “soul”—because that’s how effectively everyone who encounters that organization does, and will continue to, understand its name.

Rieux, I’m not sure I agree that ruling out all the religious denomination you think are liberal is fair as I’m letting you define the term moderate.

But my first criticism is this text:

“48% percent that believe that it is the “inspired” word of the same—still inerrant, though certain of its passages must be interpreted symbolically before their truth can be brought to light.”

What does this even mean? Usually this means humans wrote it somehow inspired by God, but once that enters the equation how could it also be inerrant? It seems to be saying that 48% is saying they believe humans wrote it. Given a population of 300 million, that means 150 million believe humans wrote it.

But then he says “230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity.”

Here he is conflating biblical literalism with people who believe in human authorship some how inspired (what ever that means). This is where I think he’s running off the rails.

But surely you’re aware, Dale, that many of us aren’t convinced they’re working nearly hard enough to include atheists in the picture.

Entirely possible. How might we improve that?

I see no indication that that outcome is within the bounds of our capabilities. “That” might improve in the long term—the arc of the moral universe doesn’t necessarily, but sometimes does in practice, bend toward justice—but I don’t find it plausible that a check toward Soulforce could possibly so drastically change their mission.

I think Soulforce is likely to “improve” in the respect in question when homosexuality and/or dissent from religion become so normalized in our society that no one sees the point of having a Soulforce any more.

If so, don’t you think our generous outreach might open up that awareness?

No, I don’t. Theism—both the simple belief in gods and the emotional reliance on such concepts—is just not that weak. Soulforce, like so many other religious institutions, is built on the Luke 6:48 “rock” of God. Our alternative—tolerant, even-handed, secular “sand”—is never going to compete in religious minds with the overwhelmingly vital “loving Creator” and “Soulforce at the center of the universe,” no matter how much money our sandy values are accompanied by.

I just don’t think it’s plausible that we can secularize a deeply and constitutionally religious institution with a little money. Chicago dyke may be correct that many of the people Soulforce serves may be future atheists—and that’s very nice, if true—but I just don’t think it’s at all realistic to expect the institution itself to be any less blinkered by religion tomorrow than it is today.

When advised of our choice, their executive director said they were “delighted and grateful!” for the support.

Um.

I don’t think anyone here doubts that you can buy a smile and a handshake with a meaningful-sized check. Numerous churches would be plenty happy for us to tithe, too; that doesn’t mean they have any interest in paying attention to atheists’ values or interests.

I’m sorry this continues to be unclear. It is our members who are “beyond belief.” The givers.

I don’t think that is a point of unclarity, really. It’s precisely what you’ve shown, both in words and in actions. It’s just hard to understand why a “Foundation Beyond Belief” would give funds to institutions that aren’t.

That is the point of the Foundation — giving nontheists a flexible way to express the compassionate side of their worldview however they wish.

All right. As several of us have explained, here, we think that’s something nontheists have always had, and would continue to have regardless of whether FBB existed. We’ve always been capable of writing checks to the Quakers, the MCC, the UUA, and so on. (Total freedom of choice with regard to choosing the recipients of my charitable donations seems more “flexible” than any charitable entity could possibly promise to be.)

If FBB were secular at both ends—both in the donors it gets money from and the recipients it chooses—then I could see why an atheist seeking secular efforts that deserve her charity would have a terrific reason to donate. (I would be one such donor.) But as it is, I just don’t see what value you provide that the UUSC or United Way or a thousand other charities that are untroubled by religiosity don’t already.

I wish there were an atheist charity that did the kind of winnowing work FBB does but that wasn’t willing to give atheists’ money to institutions that, by their very nature, work to keep religion relevant and atheists marginal. I’m sad that there doesn’t seem to be one.

Ouch: I’ve just read the entirety of the Soulforce Credo that muggle quoted in part. It’s really very bad. It plainly provides that atheists only have value as human beings to the extent that we are horrifically wrong about the existence of God. And then it says that nonbelievers “can never really be free.” What a facepalm moment:

Let these six Soulforce truths help set you free

Six Soulforce Beliefs About Myself

1. I am a child of a loving Creator, a daughter or a son of the Soulforce at the center of the universe.*

2. I am loved by my Creator exactly as I am. My sexual orientation is not a sickness to be healed nor a sin to be forgiven. My sexual orientation is a gift from my Creator to be accepted, celebrated, and lived with integrity.

3. I am not an accident. I have a purpose. I was shaped by my Creator to love God and to assist in God’s eternal struggle to win justice for all Her children who suffer injustice.

4. I will not discover my purpose nor realize my power (my own soulforce) until I join my Creator in doing justice (making things fair for all.)

5. When I join my Creator in doing justice, my own life will be renewed, empowered, and made more meaningful.

6. In serving others, it is as much my moral obligation to refuse to cooperate with evil as it is to cooperate with good.

* Neither Gandhi nor King required sectarian allegiance to any one statement of faith or religious practice. Soulforce welcomes you to do justice with us.

Can you affirm this Soulforce Credo About Myself?
Take your time. Think about it.
Read Gandhi and King.
Read the primary sources that inspired Gandhi and King, for example Jesus and the other great pioneers in faith.

You can go on to Step 2 without believing the Soulforce Credo About Myself, but both Gandhi and King remind us that we can never really be free until we see ourselves in this whole new way.

Muggle quoted point 1, but #3 is just as bad, and #4 is actually worse. And I’m sorry, Dale, but that asterisked disclaimer is mealy-mouthed, inapplicable (“any one” means the irreligious are not protected by it) and totally buried under the avalanche of dependence on “Creator” and “God.” Take away those words and the Credo simply crumbles.

And “both Gandhi and King remind us that we can never really be free until we see ourselves in this whole new way”? That’s awful; it’s a brutal shot at anyone who doubts a “Creator”! (I severely doubt King and Gandhi would agree that they’re being represented accurately, either. If King had declared stuff like that, he would have lost several of his top lieutenants.)

And muggle is absolutely right: how can anyone read the above and then claim with a straight face that Soulforce doesn’t “proselytize”? The above is rhetorically aggressive, in-your-face evangelism. Goodness—the Protestant church I grew up in wasn’t as ugly as the above.

Wow. I can accept that, when we’re talking about Quaker peace efforts in Africa, FBB funding poses interesting intellectual issues because of the prevalence of nontheism within Quakerism. Is Quakerism religious? Well, yes, but it’s at least an interesting question.

Not so here. Soulforce’s core philosophy is flat-out, hardline, without-God-we-are-nothing supremacist theism. You’re funding that? Ouch.

Aj and Rieux: Yes, ouch. It’s impossible to dismiss those concerns. All I can do is offer another way of looking at it.

That credo gagged and appalled me the first time I read it. It seemed to be aimed precisely at my head, and I resented it like hell. It just seemed to fly in the face of their other statements.

Then I realized they weren’t talking to or about me. It isn’t me they’re telling to “tape the credo to my mirror”; it’s LGBT people who are already in the church and drowning in self-loathing as a result. The organization’s purpose is to get these people out of the abyss religion has thrown them into, and they accomplish it by meeting their audience where they are — to rescue them from self-destruction by separating the god they already believe in from religion.

They clearly point out that “the organized Christian religion has become the enemy of God’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered children,” then offer a way for LGBT believers to dump organized religion and stay alive. That’s urgent work.

Like you, I wish they’d simply do away with god entirely. For some LGBT people, that works. Others are too tightly entwined in it and must be helped out through god-centered statements. I’ve never seen an organization do it more effectively. But I fully understand and respect your position on it.

I have to say I’m with rieux and the rest on this. I was origanlly going to post something about how having religious board members doesn’t imply purposeful exclusion of atheists/non christians, but after visiting their website… there is just alot of pseudo religion there.
Don’t get me wrong, I think they are doing great work. LGBT people of faith should feel comfortable. But I think that for a group whose goal is to donate to charities *beyond beliefe*, the following choices may have been more appropriate:
http://www.glaad.org/
http://www.hrc.org/
http://www.lambda.org/

That was extremely gracious, Dale. I don’t think I would have responded nearly as constructively as that, had I been in your shoes.

Dale, I still can’t support FBB, but the kinds of sentiments you express in your past few comments are strong reasons to support Dale McGowan. Many thanks for your principled commitment.